American Marketer

Automotive

Land Rover tops J.D. Power winter rankings for online shopper experience

January 8, 2020

The first 60 New Land Rover Defenders have officially arrived in the United States. Land Rover is inviting consumers to be among the first to see the models this month at the #4xFAR festival. Image credit: Land Rover The first 60 New Land Rover Defenders have officially arrived in the United States. Land Rover is inviting consumers to be among the first to see the models this month at the #4xFAR festival. Image credit: Land Rover

 

Land Rover topped J.D. Power’s manufacturer Web site rankings for the winter, beating out Ford Motor Co.’s Lincoln and the Audi brands.

The British automaker scored 864 on a 1,000-point scale, compared to Lincoln’s 855, Audi’s 849, General Motor Co.-owned Cadillac’s 844 and Toyota Corp. marque Lexus’ 842. The rankings included both luxury and premium brands.

“This year’s study was redesigned to underscore several recent trends seen in automotive vehicle manufacturer Web sites,” said Jon Sundberg, senior manager of digital solutions at J.D. Power, in a statement.

“We’ve taken note of the digital advancements OEM [original equipment manufacturer] Web sites are implementing to evolve the automotive shopping experience,” he said.

“Items like personalization, customization and digital retailing are being implemented or are on the digital road map for many OEM sites, and we wanted to ensure the customer has a voice in these areas.

“We’ve even added self-guided videos and transcripts of shoppers using OEM Web sites to give further context to the shopping experience.”

Shopping trip
J.D. Power’s semiannual study measures the usefulness of automaker sites during the process of shopping for a new vehicle by look at measures such as information and content, appearance, navigation and speed, in that order of importance.

First fielded in 1999, the Troy, MI-based market researcher and consultancy’s Manufacturer Web site Evaluation Study is based on responses from 10,031 new vehicle shoppers who indicate they will be in the market for a new vehicle within the next 24 months. This study was fielded in November.

J.D. Power 2020 manufacturer Web site ranking. Image credit: J.D. Power J.D. Power 2020 manufacturer Web site ranking. Image credit: J.D. Power

The results from this round surprised in that well-known luxury marques did not fare as well on the Web site useful as measured by J.D. Power.

For example, Porsche scored 837, Hyundai’s Genesis 836, and Nissan’s Infiniti and Jaguar both 835 – all slightly above the average score of 834.

Falling below the average score were BMW with 831, Honda’s Acura at 823 and Alfa Romeo with 820. Mercedes-Benz scored 817, Volvo 809 and Tesla 806.